Elizabeth Warren Comes Down Hard Against Global Warming, Separates Herself From Hillary Clinton

[MADem]

258. But "those women" can't be feminists, you've declared.

I think you'd better poll them before you make pronouncements like that.

You stuck your foot in it.

I can repeat it all day, no one despises war more than the warrior. And that doesn't matter if the warrior is a male or a female warrior.

If you want to crab about the MIC, direct your ire at the fat, rich, corporate basstids sipping scotch, who have never gone in harm's way even once. They're the ones who pull the strings, cause the chaos, and create the bullshit, not the people in uniform who are all too often the targets of invective from people who just don't get how the system works.

If you think that China will give up their military if we do, you're just not thinking rationally. It's their biggest employment program. In fact, it's the biggest military in the world. They've got more cannon fodder than nations have cannon. They lost thousands of people in their "Vietnam War"--the one most Americans never even heard of; they've had a number of military actions we in the west don't even cover (which leads to a false impression that they are "peaceniks" who don't ever fight--nothing could be further from the truth); they're ready to go to war if anyone interferes with what they regard as a vital interest (e.g. a border dispute):

The PLA is the world's largest military force, with a strength of approximately 2,250,000 personnel (about 0.18% of the country's population). The PLA comprises five main service branches, consisting of the PLA Ground Force, PLA Navy (PLAN), PLA Air Force (PLAAF), Second Artillery Corps (strategic missile force), and the PLA Reserve Force. In war times, armed police is a service branch of PLA. Military service is compulsory, in theory, for all men who attain the age of 18; women may register for duty in the medical, veterinary, and other technical services at ages as young as 14. However, a draft in China has never been enforced due to large numbers of volunteers from China's huge population. Demobilized servicemen are carried in a ready reserve, which is reinforced by a standby reserve of veterans and by the militia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Liberation_Army

As for our military, you're getting your wish--a drawdown is well underway. This has been in the news for some time, now.

What was supposed to be a four-year process to cut the Army’s end strength by as many as 80,000 soldiers, inactivate 10 BCTs and reorganize the remaining BCTs will now be compressed into two years, according to a report in the Army Times.

...The BCT reorganization is one of the Army’s largest organizational changes since World War II. It not only will cut 10 BCTs from the Army but also result in the inactivation of almost 200 smaller units. The Army will reorganize most of its remaining BCTs by adding a third maneuver battalion to its armored and infantry brigades, Army Times noted.

Not just the Army either--USMC has started the process as well.

The Marine Corps’ personnel drawdown plan for the year ahead has taken shape, but a lingering threat of steeper cuts leaves open the possibility that these carefully laid efforts could be upended.

At present, the Corps is on pace to whittle its active-duty force to 174,000 Marines by the end of 2017, eliminating approximately 5,000 positions a year and relying heavily on voluntary, incentive-based measures to get there. But there’s a fat, ugly elephant in the room: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s bleak predication in August that the spending caps known as sequestration could drive Marine end strength as low as 150,000. And now, under the deal Congress struck Oct. 17 to end the 16-day government shutdown, it looks like sequestration is here to stay.

The USN and to a lesser extent USAF have been in drawdown mode for the last decade, but even they aren't "done" yet.

There is nothing "wrong" with diverting DOD funds to other purposes, in fact, it's what Democrats do best. Bill Clinton was the guy who got stuck managing the drawdown that resulted from Reagan's six hundred ship Navy/Star Wars/Spend-Spend-Spend adventures, and that was a rough ride for the people managing it--painful and deep cuts were made--by a DEMOCRAT. As is happening again with the current drawdown--and again, by a DEMOCRAT.

This is a cycle that repeats regularly; the GOP ramps up for war, spends like drunken Sailors and hires like mad and makes promises they can't keep, and the Democrats are left to pay the bills and trim the ranks (which very often results in hurt feelings and disrupted lives).

I'm sick and tired of this bullshit, lazy conflation that "they're all the same" because they aren't. Democrats do drawdowns, pay off the bills, and END conflicts; Republicans run up the credit card and start wars. And that is the simple truth.

Oh, and there are feminist women in uniform--go ask some of them; they'll tell you.